One Thing All Outstanding Organizations Do

Aspiration is useless, on its own. You aspire to excellence, success, and fulfillment. Big deal. Who doesn’t?

Aspiration apart from definition, method, and means is life lived by blind hope and dumb luck. Furthermore, defining isn’t enough.

Defining organizational excellence apart from developing clear strategies to achieve it is, “Equivalent to telling a middle-school basket-ball player that the key to success is being like Michael Jordan,” Karen Martin.

How can organizations become outstanding? How can you achieve your aspirations?

From aspiration to achievement:

“More important than the quest for certainty
is the quest for clarity.” Francois Gautier

Embrace truth telling and truth seeking. In my experience, there is damn little of this in organizations. Nearly every organizational leader I know shades the truth; we lie. Why do “noble” leaders lie? Because we believe people can’t handle the truth. Think about it.

Eliminate “soft” language. Martin says, “Telling someone the honest truth … about his performance, or about a challenge the company faces is fundamentally an act of respect.” Turn this around. Shading the truth is profound, degrading disrespect.

Expose fuzzy words. I’m sick to death of terms like; better, near, almost, fast, slow, high, and low. This language is confusing at best and deceiving at worst. Be specific or shut up because you’re wasting everyone’s time and likely tooting your own horn.

Eradicate, “Maybe,” and “I’m not sure.” Karen says, “Do your best to preface every answer with, ‘Yes,’ ‘No,’ or ‘I don’t know.’” You may need to elaborate, but if you don’t begin with clarity, it’s not likely you’ll achieve it. Karen says “Yes and no” is cheating!

Apart from seeking clarity, what strategies do you employ in your pursuit of excellence?

What do all outstanding organizations do?

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Apart from clarity, we need action. Once we act we can assess its value. Until we act its all a dream, things hoped for, smoke and mirrors.

Great organizations do what many individuals do not often do well.They check to see what’s working and what’s not. If its an issue, call it that, deal with it, and find the way forward. Unlike individuals, most great organizations do not stay mired in the past or focused only on previous achievements.

Movement, dreams, aspirations are about current motion toward the future.

Excellent! Thanks for the post Dan – looks like Karen offers us a great book!

Wisdom reminds us that our ‘why’ is the mover behind the ‘how and what’… out of the heart come the words and deeds!

Matt – To the point, I recently reminded a friend who is looking for the next adventure that she offers exactly what a leader looks for – heart. Honesty is the value… a wise leader hires to character, knowing that skills are acquired as needed.

Those last few words are like cherries on a ice cream sunday. ..”belief, faith, and passion.” Who doesn’t want those qualities on their team. We just need the courage to do what it takes to develop them. What is simple isn’t always easy, at least at the beginning.

I was struck by Karen’s addressing of the soft words. We’ve started to talk as a staff about taking conversations the last 10%. Moving conversations into the places we normally walk away from. As long as the last 10% is coming from best intentions and isn’t just mean spirited. Say what you need to say over what you want to say.